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Stories from Local Food heroes

Sometimes you just have to be in awe of the local food community. The amount of people who believe so much in their service to get food from farm to plate, that they’ll put up with crazy-complicated spreadsheets, late nights, and still smile graciously when those systems let them down once again.

Today, I’m happy to post this….

We’re lucky enough to speak to a lot of people thinking of starting local food schemes, or already running them, and the stories we hear time and time again are the ‘just in time’ ones….

“I realised that the software would cost upwards of 10′s of thousands of dollars to build, and was almost ready to give up on the idea, but then I opened the paper and read that Herald article, and thought ‘Hallelujah!’ someone’s already doing it! I had to get in touch, it’s exactly what I need, at a tiny fraction what it would cost to build myself.”

That was a snippet from yesterday’s conversation with an NZ distributor who’s been in the market game for 11 years and is keen to start home delivery. I sometimes feel floored when we hear these things as it makes it feel like our efforts worthwhile. Naturally, from here the product has to match the expectations, but with the new interface I believe we’re there…

“We had to reduce the size of the scheme as the admin burden was ruining my family life, which is ironic as it was always supposed to be a lifestyle business.”

… was another one we heard recently. It makes you want to hug people sometimes, but instead we need to get them a login…